Questions and Answers

Please note:

1. This is an English text written by a German. Native English speakers who wish to help improving it please contact me. Click here, then on “Contact”.

2. All temperatures are given in Celsius degrees. If you’re used to Fahrenheit, you’ll have to convert them (F=C*1.8+32). Hence, the frequently mentioned “half-degree” (as a temperature difference) is 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit.


Why is the climate change theory pseudoscience, what is this, and why is it dangerous?
Who invented the CO2 greenhouse effect, and what is it exactly?
What about the melting glaciers?
Doesn’t Spain already have to fear water shortage because of the climate change?
What motivates the climatists?
What do the meteorologists say about all this?
Were there no meteorologists at all in those climate research programs?
Why didn’t the protection of the ozone layer touch the complexity of the atmosphere?
In the long run, what choices do we have other than nuclear power?
What can I do?
Isn’t this website pseudoscientific too, by turning to the general public?
What caused the half-degree global warming since 1980?
Fukushima is not so dangerous, so what’s the problem?


Q: Why is the climate change theory pseudoscience, what is this, and why is it dangerous?

A: (This is about the properties of pseudoscience, including the political consequences, like the persecution of dissidents, with references to the climate change theory. The theory itself is discussed not here but further below. Click here if you like to skip this section for now.)

Pseudoscience is characterized by nonscientific content which is presented by use of scientific language. Science has a high reputation today, and so it’s understandable that many try to appear as scientists, to promote their ideas. But in reality pseudoscientists are philosophers in disguise. To “prove” their preconceived convictions and dogmas, they selectively use only such empirical data that fit their theories. It seems that in this way almost everything can be “proven”. A famous example today is creationism in which the theories are taken literally from the Bible (like the creation of the world in six days), and then “scientifically proven”.

Another good example, this time for real science, is Albert Einstein’s general relativity. This theory started out as an idea in the mind of a physicist who had never experimented. One could think that it’s pure pseudoscience. The theory is as implausible as possible; hardly anyone could understand it. Even the other physicists (including Einstein’s friend, Max Planck) were skeptical for many years. But eventually the theory could be proven when during a solar eclipse a star which was really behind the sun could be seen beside it, so light could really be bent by the gravitational field of a huge mass (the sun). Nature had confirmed the idea of a genius. – Einstein formulated his theory in mathematical language only scientists could understand. Pseudoscientists, on the other hand, always turn to the general public. They keep away from nature as well as from real scientists as far as possible, because they well know that their theories cannot hold up against either of them. They know nothing about mathematics (or anything); their only concern is to make their theories as plausible as possible, to convince as many people as possible. But this is exactly what philosophers do, in order to win followers. – Real scientists say: “Whether a theory is plausible or not, is not the point; the only thing that matters is that nature agrees with it.” Pseudoscientists say: “We don’t care about nature. A theory is true if it sounds plausible enough for many people to believe it.” – Real scientists say: “We love nature. We are curious about it and want to understand it better.” Pseudoscientists say: “We only love ourselves. We just use nature and ‘science’ for our personal goals, like money, power, fame, or making people believe in the Bible.”

Often pseudoscience leads to cults, like other philosophical or religious beliefs. Real science is regarded by such cults as a conspiracy to hide the “truth”. Pseudoscience of this kind can mostly be identified through the tone of its language: it’s much like preaching; you can always feel the strong intent to reach a specific, preconceived result (and to persuade the reader of it), instead of being open and letting nature decide. Usually the pseudoscientists explain at length how they have found this wonderful new theory, but how the “established scientists” ignore it, allegedly not for scientific reasons but out of envy, because they did not find the theory themselves. Since the pseudoscientists have learned nothing, they cannot even understand the objections of the real scientists (if these bother with them at all).

If pseudoscientists are powerful enough, they can even persecute real scientists who disagree with them, like the believers of the geocentric pseudoscience (where the Earth is the center of the universe) persecuted Galileo, with the threat to burn him. The philosophers of global warming – who believe the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) to cause a climate catastrophe – are already starting this bad habit, by calling skeptics “climate deniers” and “politically incorrect”, and discriminating against them professionally, especially, sadly enough, at universities. Books and articles of dissidents are not published anymore. This happened to Galileo too, but while back then the Vatican was the censor, now the media censor themselves, for fear of being “politically incorrect”. Politicians explicitly call the boycott of “climate deniers”, like in 2006 then British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett who even compared them to Islamic terrorists. (Needless to say that Beckett knows as little of the physics of the atmosphere as Al Gore, or the other “climate savers”. They all rely on a few so-called “experts” like oceanographer Roger Revelle, who in 1967 at Harvard University taught 19-year-old Gore and other students without any prior knowledge the warming theory in a crash course. Naturally he had to leave out the meteorological details which he could, as a non-meteorologist, not know, and which his audience had not understood, so both sides had no idea what they were dealing with. It remains a mystery how one of the world’s top universities could endorse such pitiful amateurism.) – Persecution, threats, discrimination, censorship and violence are sure indicators of pseudoscience, or of ideology in general. In real science, on the other hand, there is no need for persecution to get a theory accepted; every scientist can test it on nature, and examine its validity. Here nature is the judge, not human authorities. – To further clarify the term “pseudoscience”, it should be noted that it only applies to poor natural science. Marxism was poor science too, but it was poor social science, and as such cannot be called “pseudoscience”. But besides this difference, Marxism and “climatism” have much in common: both are ideologies, and both justify persecution of dissidents and censorship for their alleged “good cause”, although history clearly shows that such measures are always recognized as wrong later. It has been suggested by some that many who were disappointed by Marxism in the late 1980s turned to climatism, because they can only think ideologically, and because they emotionally need the feeling of humankind uniting against something, if no longer against capitalism then at least against the CO2.

I’m a computer scientist who also took some meteorology at the university (this was, thank God, before the climate philosophers took over!). From my point of view, pseudoscience in general is dangerous because it spoils the ability to think really scientifically, and because we need real scientists. So in part this website is about explaining the difference between science and pseudoscience. (To learn more about where I’m coming from, please go to the section “About Myself”. There I also describe how a simple scientific hypothesis could become a pseudoscientific dogma.)

Specifically, the climate pseudoscience is dangerous because it inevitably leads to nuclear power, which is supposed to be “climate friendly” because no CO2 is emitted. But instead nuclear waste is produced which emits deadly radiation for many thousands of years, and which thousands of generations will have to watch and maintain, and to protect from natural catastrophes and terrorists. Here in Germany (and probably in other countries too), nuclear power was stopped decades ago not because of a few thousand environmental activists, but because the general public more and more supported them. The public won’t do this again if people are convinced that conventional power leads to a climate collapse. They will consider nuclear power the smaller of two evils. The activists seem to have the illusion they could in the future stop nuclear power all by themselves, and even against the general public, otherwise they immediately stopped propagating the climate theories. To explain why these are false anyway and pure pseudoscience, is the second (and main) purpose of this website. – As for the environmental activists, their motives are not clear to me. Maybe they think that the more environmental dangers they present, the more people will wake up to the environment. Or maybe they don’t think anything at all. My personal suspicion is that the nuclear industry secretly promoted the climate philosophy and financed its propaganda machinery for long, just using the unwitting activists, well knowing they would blindly jump at anything that even remotely looks like protection of the environment. They were right: The honest and well-meaning activists, who were no match for the crafty, propagandistically trained PR strategists, fell for the trick, took the bait and are now themselves paving the way for nuclear power. But since this website is not about conspiracy theories but about science, I’ll stop here. – However, it’s safe to say that nobody believes in the climate collapse for scientific reasons, but because people love the theory, because it makes them happy. (Similarly, people choose their favorite philosopher.) Some may love it because it confirms their longstanding conviction that the evil humans destroy the Earth; we all are glad if our convictions are confirmed every now and then. Others may be particularly susceptible to propaganda or want to join the huge brotherhood of climate believers, rather than being called “politically incorrect”. (There may be more reasons.)

The climate believers gather all information from the “experts” of the climate collapse; other sources are blocked out. The purpose of this, however, is not to really study science, but to collect arguments, in order to use them against nonbelievers in rhetorical disputes. This method of ideological warfare is well known from politics. The believers have not the faintest idea of what the gas equation, Dalton’s law or the Coriolis force are. Why bother to really learn something about the atmosphere? It’s much easier to echo the slogans of their expert-gurus (falsely assuming that they did their homework), and to organize parades and pop concerts “for the climate”. – So from all this we conclude that pseudoscience can be a lot of things: philosophy, ideology, politics, rhetoric, ignorance, parades, pop concerts, propaganda and persecution – but never real natural science.

There is, by the way, another phenomenon that can easily be confused with pseudoscience: popular science. Science journalists turn to the general public too, but in a completely different manner from pseudoscientists: They never imply that their audience could judge scientific content, and thus never try to convince anybody of anything. They say: “Experts found this theory. We can’t judge its validity, and neither can our audience. But we explain it to the public in popular language, so everybody can get an impression of it, and thus participate in the progress of science. If, however, somebody wants to judge the validity of the theory, he or she will have to enroll at a university and become an expert first.” (Pseudoscientists say: “You don’t need no stupid university to judge my wonderful new theory. Them lazy professors are only after our tax money anyway. Just listen to my theory, and you’ll immediately know it’s true. So wonderful is my theory.”) – Popular science has been around for a long time now, and probably all of today’s experts had their first encounter with science through popular science. This website is popular too, by keeping explanations simple, and free of mathematics. This is not a bad thing, provided that the simple explanations are backed by real science and real mathematics, researched and taught by real experts at real universities. (See also here.)


Q: Who invented the CO2 greenhouse effect, and what is it exactly?

A: Earth’s surface emits thermal radiation (“blackbody radiation” in physics), called terrestrial radiation. It’s directed to space but, before reaching it, it has to pass through the atmosphere. This consists of many different gases, some of which (mainly the water vapor) are able to absorb parts of the spectrum of the terrestrial radiation, and transform it to heat. These gases are colloquially called “greenhouse gases”, because of the remote similarity of their effect to the radiation processes in a greenhouse. The atmosphere, like every physical body, emits thermal radiation itself, part of which is directed to the ground and warms it up; this part is called atmospheric counter-radiation. This way energy is caught between ground and atmosphere. – The other part of the atmospheric radiation is directed to space, and accounts for 89 percent of all heat that leaves us, while 11 percent come directly from unabsorbed terrestrial radiation. (In space, radiation is the only way to transfer energy; heat conduction and convection require matter!) – Some meteorological amateurs, especially chemists, with their extremely simplified notion of the complex atmosphere, believe global temperatures to depend on the amounts of “greenhouse gases”, especially of carbon dioxide (CO2), although only one of 2600 volume parts of the atmosphere is CO2 (which is therefore called a trace gas).

There is no real indication that the amounts of trace gases ever influenced global temperatures; this remains speculation. Some speculate that they do have an effect, but that the CO2’s absorption band is already “used up”, so additional CO2 cannot change anything anymore. However, as real meteorologists pointed out, all such speculations are worth little to nothing because they all ignore the complexity of the atmosphere (which will be discussed later!).

The hypothesis that a climate catastrophe could result from an elevated CO2 level of the atmosphere caused by man dates back to the 1950s, among others to this publication, by oceanographer Roger Revelle and physical chemist Hans Suess. But the two non-meteorologists were not the originators of the CO2 greenhouse theory; this was long known back then, and was already applied decades earlier to Venus’s atmosphere. Yet earlier, towards the end of the 19th century, physical chemist and Nobel prize winner Svante Arrhenius (like Revelle and Suess not a meteorologist!) developed the theory that the ice ages are caused by a low CO2 level of the atmosphere. This was supposed to be due to a worldwide decrease in volcanic activity, because volcanoes emit, among other substances, lots of CO2. The question is why so many volcanoes should stop erupting at the same time, which does not comply with our understanding of volcanism. (More widely known is the inverted theory according to which a giant volcanic eruption could cause an ice age, like the Tambora eruption caused the “year without a summer” 1816.)

But why did Arrhenius especially think of the CO2? It’s clear why we think of it: We have to consider all substances we induce into the “System Earth”, and examine their possible harmfulness. With regard of the atmosphere, the CO2, the combustion product of fossil fuel, is one of those substances (others are the ozone or the radioactive krypton 85 emitted by nuclear reprocessing plants, which are harmful to us, but of which nobody ever claimed any climate relevance). – But this environmental concern was completely unknown more than 100 years ago, and besides, the rise of the CO2 level was not yet obvious. Thus Arrhenius couldn’t possibly have thought of a manmade climate change but just of the ice ages. – So why the inconspicuous trace gas CO2? It’s not even especially efficient as a “greenhouse gas”, for it only absorbs a narrow band of the spectrum of the terrestrial radiation (around 15 micrometers wavelength), while water vapor (“air humidity”) covers great parts of the spectrum. Not only is water vapor by far the most important “greenhouse gas”, but it plays another significant role in the energetics of the atmosphere: 1.6 liters of water, dispersed in the atmosphere as humidity, contain one kilowatt-hour of latent energy (enthalpy of vaporization) which becomes heat wherever the humidity condenses to cloud. (Hurricanes, e.g., draw their energy from this process.) Cloud, on the other hand, influences the energy budget of the system Earth-atmosphere, by reflecting the sunlight, and thus keeping energy from getting to us. – Today’s climate philosophers say: The water vapor was always there, but never so much CO2. They assume (and obviously Arrhenius did too) one could selectively modify one element of the atmosphere (the CO2), while all the other elements stay the same. But with a complex system like Earth’s atmosphere this is impossible, because all elements are inextricably connected. So it’s entirely possible that an increased CO2 level – as theoretical meteorologist Heinz Fortak suggested – results in more cloud (a little would be enough, because no less than 24 percent of the incoming solar radiation is lost to us through reflection on cloud), and thus compensates its own “greenhouse effect”.

But the complexity of the atmosphere goes far beyond that, because everything that touches it can influence it, like plants, animals (perhaps even butterflies, see below), mountains, and especially the oceans. They constantly exchange energy and gases (mainly water vapor, but also, e.g., CO2) with the atmosphere. The mathematician and computer pioneer John von Neumann certainly was right to call the atmosphere the second most complex system known to us, after the human brain. And like the brain the “system atmosphere” is highly nonlinear, which means that the proportionality of cause and effect seems to be violated (which of course is not really true; on some level it remains valid!). Nonlinearity means that tiny causes can lead to big effects, the most popular example for which is the butterfly which causes the tornado. Of course nobody ever observed such a thing, but it’s true that a tiny difference in a given state of the atmosphere can lead to a big difference in a later state. This is what makes predictions of the atmosphere so difficult. Nobody can, e.g., predict a hurricane until it has formed, and even after it has, its future behavior cannot be predicted for more than a day or so, at least not reliably. – Wikipedia notes: “The weather is famously nonlinear, where simple changes in one part of the system produce complex effects throughout.”

If a system is too complex for us to understand it theoretically, we have to resort to experiment. Since we cannot simulate the complex atmosphere in a laboratory (at least not realistically), we have to induce CO2 into the real atmosphere, and then observe its reaction. This experiment is currently underway, although of course we don’t burn fossil fuel to this purpose, but to gain energy. So far the result is devastating for the CO2 theory, because there was only a slight global warming for some time, and today we have a global cooling, in spite of the continuously rising CO2 level.

Our atmosphere has spoken. We can reject the result just because we cannot understand it theoretically. Or we can simply be grateful that our atmosphere tolerates our activities so well, and so-to-speak “understands” our need for energy. We can take this as one of the countless gifts nature grants us.

A very wise man once said: “Had humankind waited with digesting until the process of digestion was understood theoretically, evolution had been impossible. People had to vigorously start digesting, and leave the theory to a later time.”

Perhaps another word about Svante Arrhenius: He was a really genius creator of unusual and sometimes bizarre ideas, in different scientific fields. We need such people: Even if 9 of 10 of such hypotheses are later proven false, the tenth might start a scientific revolution. We just have to be careful not to take these hypotheses as “absolute truths”. Here are some examples: 1) Arrhenius suggested that the Earth has a tail (like a comet, only extremely thin). This was supposed to explain the gegenschein, an astronomical phenomenon. 2) Arrhenius was the main advocate of “panspermia”, a theory according to which bacteria spores travel through space from planet to planet. He calculated the optimum size for a particle to be able to do so, and matched it with the average spore size. Spores from Earth were supposed to reach Mars in 20, and Jupiter in 80 days. 3) Arrhenius tried to explain the changing colors of Mars as a result of chemical reactions. This again shows his tendency, which he probably has in common with many chemists, to reduce everything to chemistry. With Mars this could even work though, while the reduction of Earth’s highly complex atmosphere to one single chemical substance (CO2) is simply amateurish and laughable. – Of course Arrhenius didn’t win his Nobel prize for such theories, or his CO2 speculation. At daytime, in his own field, he was a brilliant scientist who made important discoveries. After work he speculated and invented new theories, like others go bowling.


Q: What about the melting glaciers?

A: Melting glaciers somewhere in the world are not a sign for a future climate catastrophe. Regional variations of temperature have nothing to do with global warming. In central Europe, the summer of 03 was several degrees too warm, the winter of 09/10 several degrees too cool. These variations are due to the properties of the atmospheric circulation, and are many times as high as the mean change of the global average, which is given in hundredth-degrees per year. If glaciers melt in some region, this is not because of the tiny global warming of a few tenth-degrees over decades (this would not be enough), but because of a much more elevated temperature over months or years due to the circulation. This means that other regions were cooler than normal, because the global average is – compared to the huge circulation-related variations – nearly constant. In other words: Glaciers melt because of a change in the distribution of heat, not because of a global change in temperature.

A historical case of such an effect is the polar warming 100 years ago: As every meteorologist and every geologist at some point must have learned, between 1890 and 1940 the thickness of the arctic ice shrank by one third, the covered area by 10 to 15 percent. This had nothing to do with any global warming, but with a temporary intensification of the global circulation of the atmosphere. Both polar regions need (and receive through the circulation) energy from lower latitudes, and a stronger circulation provides more of it, with the result of a local warming of the polar regions, at the expense of the lower latitudes, because the atmosphere is “mixed” more. After 1940 the circulation weakened, the polar regions were more “on their own” again, and the arctic ice grew back so fast that, during the 1970s, concerns were raised about a new ice age. (Ironically, at about the same time Al Gore received his warming indoctrination from Roger Revelle!) In no way all of this could have had anything to do with CO2, if only because there was still comparatively little of it around. Moreover, it continued increasing after 1940. (The polar warming probably occurred many times before, but remained unobserved.)

As for global (not local) warming and CO2, there are two incontestable facts:

1. The CO2 level of the air has increased by half over the last 200 years.

2. The real global temperature change of the atmosphere over this period of time does not even come close to that expected theoretically (under laboratory conditions) from this enormous CO2 increase.

From this follows

3. that the yet poorly understood, highly complex free atmosphere reacts differently to CO2 than the laboratory. Either the atmosphere has mechanisms – yet unknown or so far underestimated – that are stronger that the “greenhouse effect” of the CO2, or there is another reason for this empirical fact. There is no indication that the atmosphere could suddenly lose its “immunity” against the CO2. The warming prophets ignore this immunity and predict the same warming of 5 degrees per century as 30 years ago, although this already miserably failed, because the warming hardly exceeded a half-degree, and now we have a global cooling. Therefore it’s more and more doubtful if the half-degree is even caused by the CO2 (as a weakened reaction, but nevertheless), because there have always been natural variations of the global temperatures, even outside the ice ages. About their cause and that of the weaker variations there are so far only speculations.

Every serious scientist must have realized by now that the hypothesis of the CO2-related heat catastrophe has failed, even if he or she does not have the courage to say it out loud. The problem is not that the hypothesis was once formulated. Scientists formulate hypotheses on a daily basis, and dismiss them if they are not confirmed. The problem is that in this case scientific amateurs got wind of it who took the hypothesis as an “absolute truth”. At first those were environmental idealists who made no difference between indifferent “climate deniers” and those (supposedly) paid by interested parties, and real skeptics who had serious scientific doubts (and eventually were right). This blind and aggressive idealism was later used by politicians and capitalists. Thus a scientific hypothesis became an ideology, a political program and an economic factor. Now the people in charge think they can’t go back, for fear of losing face and money. Rather they resort to nuclear power and start the nuclear devastation of the planet, hoping not to live to see it. (Ironically, the environmental idealists are to a big extent to blame for this: Scientific ignorance can make the most heroic protectors of the environment its worst enemies, as in the case of Greenpeace who still, unconvincible by nature, stick to their warming, in the ridiculous hope they could get humankind to give up power plants and civilization altogether.) – Now to keep people on the warming track, “warmth reporters” are sent out who have to find places all over the world which at the time are unusually warm due to the circulation, in order to present them as “proof” for the future catastrophe. Central Europe was visited by the mobile warmth reporters mainly during the hot summer of 03 and the warm April of 07; during the cold winter of 09/10 they were not seen here. Perhaps they were in Vancouver, because at the Olympics there the weather was said to be too warm. This is the selection of empirical data to a specific purpose which is so typical for pseudoscience. If we firmly believe that the full moon always comes with a change of weather, we only remember the cases in which this happened. Of course it happens sometimes, and so sometimes melting glaciers can be found here or there.

Global warming can be compared to the arrival of the high tide on a coast with a high swell: Each wave crest is a little bit higher than the last, each wave trough a little bit less deep than the last. An observer cannot see the rising of the water but only the waves (which correspond in the example to the circulation-related variations). The “warmth reporter” then corresponds to one who always points at the wave crests and shouts: “There comes the high tide!”, and who ignores the wave troughs. But the real high tide only shows over a longer period of time, as a rise of the whole “system”. Accordingly, we cannot perceive global warming; we only notice the “waves” of the atmospheric circulation, as warm, cool, dry and moist periods. For example: That on a hot summer day on which we had had 35 degrees in 1980, under the same atmospheric conditions we now have 35½ degrees, we cannot perceive; this can only be determined by means of statistics. But we all notice when a few days later, after a change in the circulation, the maximum temperature is only 15½ (1980: 15) degrees (which causes the hasty departure of the warmth reporters). – For propaganda purposes it was tried to connect even a tiny global warming to properties of the circulation (more storms etc.), but this was not convincing (e.g., the “Katrina” hurricane season of 2005, back then presented as the beginning of the climate collapse, remained a unique episode). If anything, a stronger circulation can, as explained above, be the cause (not the effect!) of a local warming of the polar regions, which then, however, is considerably more than a half-degree over decades. If today there really is an increase of storms in medium and higher latitudes, and if the arctic ice really is shrinking (i.e. both are not just propaganda), this means that the meteorological amateurs who today call themselves “climatologists”, mix up two completely different phenomena: 1) a tiny global warming for some time without any effect, except on statistics, and 2) an intensification of the circulation like that between 1890 and 1940, which causes the polar warming. This mix-up may be inadvertent or intentional, in order to promote nuclear power by blaming everything on the CO2. But while there are only speculations about the causes of both phenomena, at least the second cannot possibly have anything to do with CO2, because it occurred before, and with still little CO2 around.

The current global cooling is of course equally inconspicuous as the former warming, and it would be equally absurd to connect to it the cold European winter of 09/10. This was just a wave trough, and so there also remain enough wave crests for the warmth reporters to point at. Even if the atmosphere takes back the half-degree completely or cools down even further, there will still be hot summers that can be presented as a sign for a future heat catastrophe. They occurred before the warming too; in central Europe, e.g., in 1975, 76 and 83. Back then nobody thought of prophesying a catastrophe because of this. – Generally people were smarter in earlier times. Here are two examples: 1) As mentioned above, between 1890 and 1940 the arctic ice shrank drastically. But unlike today, this phenomenon did not cause the slightest excitement, let alone panic. There were no sentimental stories about sad polar bears sitting on ice floes. Of course back then there was no scapegoat to blame, like today the CO2. Also, there was no nuclear industry who could offer the perfect solution for the polar bears: their complete extermination through nuclear devastation. 2) Hermann Hesse described in the short story “Der Zyklon” very vividly a tornado which (on 1 July 1895) devastated parts of his hometown, Calw (which is very unusual in Germany). Back then people took this for what it was: a freak of nature; today – like perhaps in the Middle Ages – it would cause a flood of darkest prophecies. The CO2 ideology has made many of us “weather-readers” who predict the future from a momentary weather situation, like some do from the stars or the cards.


Q: Doesn’t Spain already have to fear water shortage because of the climate change?

A: It’s been known for a long time how sensitive especially the Mediterranean region reacts to deforestation. Spain didn’t exactly hold back on that. In addition to planned deforestation, criminal realty speculators committed arson on woods time and time again. If Spain lacks water, this is the reason. Climate and water in central Europe, on the other hand, have not changed significantly over the past decades. Theoretical meteorologist Heinz Fortak even suggested that a slight global warming might be caused by the worldwide massive deforestation. Of course this is speculation, like the CO2 theory. But a fact is that the fixation on the universal scapegoat CO2 more and more diverts us from the real environmental problems. It’s always much more convenient to have one single scapegoat, instead of complicated problems.

Consequently, the message from the nuclear industry to the Spanish could be something like that: “Don’t worry, the mystery is solved: The CO2 is the source of all evil! So chop down all your trees, burn all your woods; you don’t need them anymore. What you need is nuclear power, to exorcize the evil CO2. Then everything will be fine, and abundant water will make Spain a Garden of Eden.” – Instead then the following will happen: Spain will become a desert altogether, all rain will flow through wadis directly into the sea, and, on top of that, the desert will be deadly from nuclear contamination.

(By the way, the idea of the “universal scapegoat” is present throughout history. Only usually it was people, like witches or minorities. Once the witches were burned, all the problems were gone. I suppose we could call it progress that now for the first time an inanimate chemical substance is demonized as “witch”.)


Q: What motivates the climatists?

A: Climatists, the proclaimers of the philosophy of CO2-related global warming, can have different motives. As far as I can tell, there are six categories of climatists, listed below. While the original motive is fear of the future, based on Svante Arrhenius’s CO2 speculation, today this is only true for categories 1, 3 and 4. In the other categories, personal gain replaces the original concern.

1) The believers: Non-meteorologists who are indoctrinated by other climatists. They believe in climatism like others believe in God. According to this new religion, every melting of snow, every heat wave and every thunderstorm is CO2-related.

2) The scientific cowards: Scientists (mostly meteorologists) who know that climatism is pseudoscience, and that the alleged “symptoms”, like melting ice or lack of water, have nothing to do with a half-degree global temperature change, let alone with CO2. But they keep their mouths shut and prove themselves as particularly “good climatists”, for fear of getting persecuted as dissidents.

3) The tactical liars: Scientists who know that the “symptoms” have other causes, but who firmly believe in Arrhenius’s theory. They say: “People are stupid. If we tell them the truth and say that there are no symptoms, but that in our opinion, and according to Svante Arrhenius, there will be a warming of 5 degrees in 100 years, and of 10 degrees in 200 years, and of 100 degrees in 2000 years, the stupid people will not take us seriously. So we rather lie to them, for their own good, by presenting them already today the first “symptoms” of the future catastrophe, so they believe us. The stupid people will thank us later for having lied to them.” – All propagandists said that, but nobody ever thanked them later. The Communists lied, in order to build “better societies” according to Karl Marx. After these had collapsed, nobody thanked the liars. Nothing good can ever come from lies.

4) The scientific fanatics: To them Arrhenius was infallible. So strong is their faith and admiration for him that they preach the everlasting warming openly, without resorting to lies about “symptoms”, and even at the risk of being ridiculed.

5) The capitalists: People making money through climatism, like stockholders of the nuclear industry or of producers of wind and solar power devices (all CO2-free!). They need the CO2 fears of the people, in order to get rich.

6) The bribed: Politicians and scientists paid by the nuclear industry, or other interested parties. (Hypothetical.)

Of course we cannot easily tell which category a specific climatist belongs to, except for Al Gore who belongs to the first, and Roger Revelle who belonged to the fourth. The sixth category is still hypothetical, because we have no proof for bribery yet.

By the way, not only are the “symptoms” not really symptoms, but the measurement of such a tiny warming as a half-degree is questionable too. (A 100 degree warming in 2000 years we could certainly measure, but this would also produce real symptoms!) Every motorcycle driver knows from experience that temperatures can vary by several degrees over a distance of just a few hundred meters, especially on sunny summer days. E.g., you can feel the cool catabatic (=downward moving) wind from a wooded hill in quite a distance, even with sunny meadows in between. Hence, a tiny “global warming” could easily be fabricated by just moving the measurement sensors a little bit in the suitable directions. Moreover, since the data are mostly handled by climatists, direct forgery is also possible, and was already claimed by critics in at least one case. Measurements should be evenly distributed over the entire planet, including Antarctica and all the oceans, which is not the case. Instead, the gaps are filled with fictitious data, from computer software made by climatists. In spite of the grave consequences (nuclear power), all of this is in no way supervised by independent observers. It’s like an election with only one party counting the votes. – So not only are the global temperatures technically hard to determine when it comes to tenth-degrees, but also is the measurement in the hands of people with philosophical or financial intentions, depending on the above categories. It may be or may not be coincidence: the warming started exactly after the so-called “climatologists” (see next section, “research programs”) had determined their huge warming at their “World Climate Conference” in 1979. It was either bad luck or bad coordination that the warming could not keep up with their predictions. – If we take away the false “symptoms” and the questionable data, there really and literally remains only one single basis and motive for climatism: the 19th century speculation of chemist Svante Arrhenius.


Q: What do the meteorologists say about all this?

A: Meteorologists are not just weathermen or weatherwomen, but university graduates who went through a long and hard curriculum that is mainly mathematical and physical, and is solely about Earth’s atmosphere, which makes them the best experts of it. They fought as long as possible against the warming theory, which had been brought upon by chemists who thought that they were smarter than the experts, and that they could easily transfer results of laboratory experiments to the complex free atmosphere. Only meteorologists could know that this is impossible. In 1973 meteorologist Prof. Dr. Fritz Möller of Munich University wrote: “(...) a CO2 increase from 292 ppm in 1900 to 330 ppm in 1950 was registered. This, by the way, led to all kinds of speculations about an artificial influence on the climate by man which, however, are not tenable because other influences, like the variations of the general circulation, are much stronger.” (F. Möller, “Einführung in die Meteorologie”, Vol. 1, Mannheim 1973, p. 37) By “speculations” he meant publications like this of 1957, by oceanographer Roger Revelle and physical chemist Hans Suess, and the subsequent propaganda which came from other non-meteorologists at first, but later even from nonscientists, like politicians, actors and pop singers, i.e. from people who don’t even know how scientific work is done. In 1971 meteorologist Prof. Dr. Heinz Fortak of Berlin University (FU) answered with a counterspeculation, according to which more CO2 leads to a little more cloud, and thus compensates its own “greenhouse effect” (H. Fortak: „Meteorologie“, 2nd edition, Berlin 1982, p. 78). – Had humankind listened to these real experts of the atmosphere, instead of listening to chemists, oceanographers, actors and pop singers, the climate mass hysteria could have been avoided, and along with it the future nuclear power threat. As mentioned before, empirical data today show that the real experts were right. (By the way, both quoted meteorologists were deeply concerned about the real environmental problems of the time, like ozone or acid rain, and thus were certainly not “bribed by the oil supermajors”, as was later claimed of all “climate deniers”.)

Today, as “climate deniers” are persecuted, most meteorologists hail the warming philosophy, especially if they have jobs to lose and families to support. This of course is understandable: Even Galileo, when facing the stake of the Inquisition, admitted that the sun revolves around the Earth. – If a weatherman or weatherwoman on television said only one word against the climate cult, this had been his or her last appearance. “Climate deniers” at universities who speak up are demoted or, if lawfully possible, terminated. The reason is simple: no television station and no university wants to be branded “politically incorrect”. (The same happens to scientists who publish – outside the university, but under their real names – about parapsychology. This is also considered a “disgrace” for the university.)

The persecution came not all at once but slowly. During the 1970s politicians, misled by fanatics, initiated “research programs”, to determine the future climate. Only supporters of the warming philosophy were invited, regardless of their profession, among them geologists and (again!) chemists. These so-called “climatologists” were supposed to predict as big a warming as possible, and indeed they came up with values around 5 degrees per century. This method of “climate research” is still used today, and the predictions are still the same too, although the old ones already failed. (By the way, choosing different scientists would not have provided a better prediction reliability, but only different figures. With long-term predictions of Earth’s complex atmosphere you get the same reliability by throwing dice.) – The fanatics then propagated the “scientific” results, in order to increase the pressure on opponents more and more.

We have an interesting testimony from that transition time. Above I quoted from a book by meteorologist Heinz Fortak. The quoted part originates from 1971, but in 1982 he wrote an epilog for the second edition, mainly about the new “research programs”. Fortak tries to be positive about them, and renders the warming predictions, but then his scientific ethics kicks in, forcing him to warn the reader about the “great number of uncertainties” in such predictions (p. 291). He describes the computer simulations of the atmosphere and their results, but then again he stresses how “highly speculative” “all these statements” are (p. 293). – Of course only meteorologists doubted the reliability of the predictions, for only they knew of the complexity of the atmosphere. The chemists had no doubts because to them Earth’s atmosphere is the same as a shoebox filled with air. However, after the politicians, for whatever reasons, had proclaimed the result to be the “absolute truth”, and every different opinion to be “politically incorrect”, the meteorologists had to decide whether to convert to the warming philosophy, or to heroically resist, and then get persecuted and finished. Fortak’s epilog shows that in 1982 he was already half-willing to give in to the pressure, while at the same time his professional conscience still bothered him.

Imagine that politicians, misled by fanatical creationists, initiate “research programs” to prove that evolution is wrong, and that the world was literally created in six days. Scientists who are opposed to this, like almost all biologists, geologists and astronomers, are terminated and replaced by ideologues and opportunists who have learned nothing. Of course these successfully “prove” creationism, but, among other things, research about the mutation of viruses and bacteria stops, because mutation is part of evolution and therefore “politically incorrect”, and because the experts are gone. Epidemics can eradicate humankind, just like climatism can eradicate all life on Earth through nuclear devastation. One way or another pseudoscience will kill us if we don’t stop it.


Q: Were there no meteorologists at all in those climate research programs?

A: Of course there were. Not all meteorologists are scrupulous enough to resist such a temptation. Being chosen for a national (or even international) research program is not only a great honor, but also very lucrative, because large amounts of taxpayers’ money go into such programs. Moreover, it’s great fun to sit around with all kinds of scientists, chat, drink coffee and play with computers. It’s pseudoscientific paradise. When the money is used up, the result that was already determined at the beginning is announced. And the best thing: Unlike weather forecasters, “climatologists” can never be held responsible for their predictions! If they prophesy the climate of, say, 2100, chances are that they will all be deceased by then. (Please note: This description only applies to pseudoscientific “research”. There is enough really scientific research going on that is important to all of us.)


Q: Why didn’t the protection of the ozone layer touch the complexity of the atmosphere?

A: This refers to a remark in the “Links” section.

The complexity of the atmosphere described above only concerns the troposphere, the lowest layer which reaches up to a height mostly between 10 and 15 kilometers. Above lies the stratosphere which contains the ozone layer. This was threatened by chemically highly stable gases which were released mainly from spray cans. The gases had to wander from the ground through the troposphere to the ozone layer. By doing so, they of course were influenced by the complex weather, which could delay or accelerate their transport. But it was safe to say that eventually they had to somehow reach the ozone layer, by means of diffusion, the tendency of every gas to attain a constant concentration over the whole atmosphere. In other words: While they were temporarily influenced by the complexity, eventually it didn’t matter. There was never any indication they could also harm the troposphere. Their effect on the ozone layer could be scientifically understood, and also simulated in the laboratory. There is nothing complex about it, just plain physics and chemistry. Today, after we drastically reduced the emission of the gases, the ozone layer is starting to recover, but this will still take some time, because the stable gases won’t disappear easily. Since they act catalytic, they are not eaten up while doing their “work”.

The effect of CO2, on the other hand, can be neither understood nor simulated, because it is, as I tried to outline above, part of the complex energetics of the atmosphere (troposphere). Considering the unpredictability of this, the only plausible reason for fighting CO2 could be the “green ideology”, according to which everything humankind does is bad. (This includes, e.g., the building of houses.) According to this ideology, Earth would be paradise if humans had never existed. But this is not true: there were ice ages and there was the medieval warm period when it was warmer than today, neither of which we can really explain. There always were storms, droughts, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and occasionally an asteroid. This is not exactly what we would call a “paradise”. – The only reasonable thing for us to do is to restrict our measures to what we really understand – instead of blind pseudoscientific action –, and then trust that our planet will keep providing for us, which, however, will be difficult once it’s contaminated with radioactivity.

But something we could achieve is the protection of the ozone layer. The funny thing is that the gases were also made out as “greenhouse gases”. Apparently even in a time of global cooling scientists (probably chemists) test gases for the “greenhouse property”, i.e. the ability to absorb thermal radiation of any wavelength between 3 and 60 micrometers. This now seems an established attribute of a gas, like the specific weight, only without any practical application.


Q: In the long run, what choices do we have other than nuclear power?

A: Only efficient energy sources will be discussed here. This excludes, e.g., wind and solar power which are inefficient, and only of propagandistic value. (The propaganda suggests that we don’t need power plants anymore because of these “green” energy sources. This claim, which can be easily refuted, will keep not one single nuclear power plant from being built. Moreover, the immense subsidies on these (nearly) useless gadgets weaken our economies, and the growing number of “windmills” turn our last remaining natural landscapes into industrial areas.) – So today we have fossil fuel, with its huge but still limited supply, and with its alleged harmfulness to the climate, and nuclear power, with its waste which is deadly for many thousands of years. In the future we could have nuclear fusion which produces little radiation and no nuclear waste, and which comes in two variants: hot and cold. Hot fusion has been researched for decades without success; a new attempt is currently made in France. (We know that it works in principle because the sun uses it.) Cold fusion, on the other hand, is still a mystery: in 1989 an expert panel organized by the United States Department of Energy stated that “nuclear fusion of the type postulated would be inconsistent with current understanding and, if verified, would require theory to be extended in an unexpected way” (Wikipedia). In other words: Cold fusion appears to work, but according to our current physics this cannot be. – Moreover, we could in the future have energy sources we cannot even think of today, like 100 years ago nobody could think of nuclear energy.

To understand cold fusion, or to find something completely new, our physics will have to evolve. Since ancient times scientists tend to believe that they live in the time when science is finished. When Max Planck was still a student, his professor warned him to try anything in theoretical physics, because there was nothing more to discover in this field. Planck did not take his advice; instead, he revolutionized physics with his quantum theory. A few years before his death, Planck gave his fellow physicists the inverted advice: not to regard quantum theory as the end of physics, as he knew most of them did. During the 70 years since then physics has not evolved much; we still have the problem today that quantum theory does not comply with general relativity. Attempts to find a “unified field theory” were not successful so far, except for, perhaps, Heim’s theory which, however, has not gained much attention yet, for several reasons.

One reason is that Heim’s theory is “too revolutionary”: It’s the first physical theory in which space (i.e. “space-time”) and matter are not separated (in the sense that matter is “located” in space). Instead, space and matter are both manifestations of an underlying six-dimensional hyperspace. According to the few physicists researching the field, the theory resolves the inconsistencies of traditional physics. Be that as it may: to me it’s interesting that the theory as the only one also promises to explain at a later stage phenomena like telepathy, which after decades of research is empirically proven beyond reasonable doubt (about 1:1 billion). This is not so much a problem for telepathy and related phenomena as it is for our physics. Science should always try to explain as many phenomena as possible. The more natural phenomena a theory can explain, the closer it is to nature, and the more likely to provide new technologies. We should find it rather disturbing that there are so many phenomena that directly contradict our current physics, because this means that its concept of space, time and matter contradicts reality. Reductionism (the exclusion of inconvenient phenomena) may be temporarily necessary, but continued forever it moves science into the vicinity of pseudoscience, the main feature of which is the selection of convenient data. To simply label such phenomena “supernatural” is a poor excuse: this is what natives of remote islands say about our planes and cars.

Suppose we now build countless nuclear power plants – not out of real need, but because of the pseudoscientific climate philosophy –, and 10 or 20 years later a breakthrough is achieved in a new energy technology. What can we do then? The power plants were too expensive to just tear them down, and besides, this would cost even more than building them because they are contaminated. The German taxpayers are currently paying many billions for the wrecking of an old nuclear power plant. (They are also paying many billions for the transfer of nuclear waste from a salt mine which is threatened by flooding. The power companies only pay for the building of the plants, and take money for the energy; wrecking and nuclear waste do not interest them. Nuclear power seems cheap because of this, and because misled politicians are charging special taxes on the supposedly “climate-damaging” fossil fuel, as opposed to the “clean” nuclear power.) – So the countless plants will keep working, and heap up more and more nuclear waste. Thousands of future generations will have to watch, maintain and protect from natural catastrophes and terrorists the deadly waste of a technology which was already obsolete at the time when the waste was produced.

However, in the distant future, if in spite of all efforts our physics cannot evolve, and hot fusion does not work, the necessity could arise to resort to nuclear power, because of the limited supply of fossil fuel. But this should really be the last resort, and nothing to be done just because of a pseudoscientific philosophy.


Q: What can I do?

A: You can spread the word, by recommending this website to others. The more people know about these things, the less likely it is that the nuclear plans succeed. You may write a commentary for this website, or ask me another question. If you don’t like the design or architecture of this website, tell me. You can find an address here. Or you may create another website. If you like to research the field yourself, be cautious about sources written later than 1980, because many of those, if not most, are pure pseudoscience. Here is an example: A few years ago I googled “ice age”, clicked on the first entry and was surprised to find the astronomical ice age hypothesis canonized. The others were not even mentioned anymore! The theory was explained and “proven” so neatly that I didn’t suspect anything; I really believed that this is now the final solution. A few weeks later I learned by chance that I had been on a known climatist website! – Of course the astronomical hypothesis is far from being proven, but climatists propagate it because they want us to believe that the atmosphere is rather predictable. What is more predictable than astronomical events? (Most ice age theories assume unpredictable causes, like A. T. Wilson’s theory an outburst of Antarctic ice which leads to a massive increase of sun-reflecting pack ice. Such theories are the nightmare of all climate prophets!) – So what I had taken for the result of the latest scientific progress was nothing but ideological propaganda. This was my first encounter with hardcore climatism, and as embarrassing as it is to admit: this time even I fell for pseudoscience, although the phenomenon pseudoscience was already long known to me, and although I had prior knowledge in the field. – This website contains several links to Wikipedia, which in general is a reliable scientific source. But this is different with ideologically charged topics. Since Wikipedia bases primarily on majorities, fanatical would-be experts can easily outvote the real experts (who are normally undisturbed by non-experts). With climatism it’s even worse because many real experts follow the “politically correct” opinion too, against their better judgement. According to EIKE, the German Wikipedia is completely taken over by climatists. Be that as it may: since my above experience I would never even think of consulting Wikipedia on this topic. (More about majorities and democracy in the next section!)

Also, you could help me think about why we are today so susceptible to pseudoscience, and ideologies in general. Why are we so happy with dogmas and “absolute truths”? How is it possible that an intelligent person like Al Gore who at the age of 19 hears a theory about Earth’s atmosphere from an oceanographer (Roger Revelle), carries this theory with him for decades, without ever doubting it, and without ever asking the real experts in the field? Or – even worse – did he ask them, but then reject their answer, so he could stick to his ideology, claiming that they merely closed their eyes before his “inconvenient truth”? Could it be that Revelle was charismatic like a guru, with piercing eyes nobody could resist? (I suspect this because Gore later acted like a missionary who has the irrepressible urge to convert everybody to his wonderful new religion, which he believes will save the world.) Do many of us need ideologies as something to hold on, because they lost touch with their real (spiritual) religion?

I have no definite answers to these questions, but I know one thing for sure: Ideology is the archenemy of all science. (Real religion never is: Max Planck, e.g., was deeply religious.) – 400 years ago, Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler said that the Earth revolves around the sun. The pope said that the sun revolves around the Earth. Either way, life went on, farmers ploughed their fields and people had to eat. They could easily ignore the academic quarrel between Galileo and the Vatican. Today this is completely different: With 7 billion people on Earth we need science, in order to survive. We just cannot afford to indulge in ideologies anymore, or else they will eventually kill us all.


Q: Isn’t this website pseudoscientific too, by turning to the general public?

A: In a way, yes. But sometimes you can only fight fire with fire. Now that the damage is done, and distorted scientific content has leaked to the general public, we have to turn to it too, in order to hopefully undo the damage.

Generally, scientific content cannot be discussed by the public, but only among experts who have learned something. One visitor of this website suggested that people should indeed – as I wrote in the “Links” section as a joke – elect the best experts; this would be democratic. If there will ever be such an election for the world’s best meteorologist, Al Gore will probably be elected, and appointed World Climate President. Of course he never learned anything about the subject, but who cares as long as he’s popular? From his throne he will make every CO2-related decision in the world. The election will top everything we have ever seen: All the political parties, Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and others will hand out billions of pamphlets, and organize countless parades, concerts, and television shows for the “good cause”. People all over the world will bravely stand together against a chemical substance, and feel very proud and happy.

Unfortunately, natural science doesn’t work that way. If this method had been applied during the past 400 years, we still lived today like in the Middle Ages. Natural science is not based on popularity or publicity but on knowledge, and in fact is a dictatorship, not a democracy. The dictator is nature itself. We cannot put to vote whether the gullet is connected to the stomach or to the knee; nature has decided that. We cannot change it, even if every single person on Earth wanted to. We have to accept the decisions of the “dictator nature”, but we can learn to understand it, and we have to learn for years, in order to understand just one scientific field.

About 50 years ago, an oceanographer (Roger Revelle) and a physical chemist (Hans Suess) wrote an article about the absorption of atmospheric CO2 by the oceans. They had found that CO2 is not as easily absorbed as scientists thought until then, so more CO2 stays in the atmosphere than expected. This was their field of expertise, and undoubtedly their research was competent so far. But then they concluded that, according to Svante Arrhenius, this would cause a terrible heat catastrophe. This was not their field of expertise, and neither had it been Arrhenius’s. Moreover, 60 years had passed since he had published his CO2 speculation. Meteorology was still rather rudimentary at the end of the 19th century.

The meteorologists of the 1960s read the article, but reached a different conclusion. They simply knew more about Earth’s atmosphere than Arrhenius, Revelle or Suess. Of course they knew about the “greenhouse effect” of CO2 (which is elementary), but they could put it into its proper place among many other things, which Revelle and Suess had never even heard of. Suess apparently accepted the verdict of the experts, but Revelle did not. When he realized that the meteorologists rejected his theory, he turned to nonscientists and teenagers, like 19-year-old Al Gore who knew nothing about the atmosphere, and thus believed every word this famous scientist said. Perhaps he did not even know that Revelle was really an oceanographer who dabbled in a field he knew little about. Later, nonscientists like Gore preached to other nonscientists. A pseudoscientific cult and pseudoreligion had arisen which had nothing to do with natural science anymore, and which spread much faster than any real religion in the past, thanks to modern communication technology.

Now we have only two choices left: sit back and wait until nature corrects the error through an ice age, with the risk of nuclear devastation in the meantime, or try correcting it ourselves, by turning to the misled public once again, although in principle this is the typical behavior of pseudoscientists.

Roger Revelle and the likes of his are not violating the code of some secret society but the scientific spirit, by seeking appreciation from nonscientists. Revelle was a scientist himself and an expert in his field; he should have known better. What had he said if non-oceanographers had spread oceanographic theories? The only explanation for his pseudoscientific behavior I can think of is the extreme fear of the future he must have had, which clouded his clear thinking, together with his blind faith in Arrhenius’s theory.


Q: What caused the half-degree global warming since 1980?

A: On this website, four possible causes are mentioned:

1) Natural variation, like the ice ages or the medieval warm period.

2) CO2 (the only cause climatists will accept).

3) Heavy deforestation, especially in the tropics. (See here.)

4) Poor measurement or fraud, i.e. the half-degree is not real. (See here.)

Personally, I prefer none of these hypotheses to the others. Possibly the truth is a combination of two or more of them. There may also be more hypotheses. However, climatism has nothing to do with the half-degree. The only link between the two is the fact that today’s climatists use the half-degree as an argument. Roger Revelle taught climatism long before the half-degree; he did not need it, and it was certainly not a half-degree he was worried about, but a much bigger and continued warming over time, based on Svante Arrhenius’s CO2 speculation. Revelle’s fears were probably intensified by the growing general awareness during the 1960s, that humankind can severely harm the planet Earth. Indeed we did some bad things to the environment, including the atmosphere, during the past 50 years, which led some to condemn civilization and science altogether. However, it was science that provided the remedies: Science gave us catalytic converters, and science showed us how to get rid of the acid rain. Pseudoscience, on the other hand, never helps anybody, except, sometimes, the pseudoscientists, like in the case of John C. Symmes who became famous with his Hollow Earth Theory in the 19th century. Pseudoscience is not about nature but about subjective conditions, like fear in the case of climatism, or insanity in the case of the hollow Earth. Therefore, pseudoscience cannot help handle nature.

There was a headline some time ago: “More CO2 today than ever during the past 800000 years!” So what? There are also more toothbrushes today on Earth than during the past 800000 years. This doesn’t mean anything, unless we firmly believe in the meteorological deductions of non-meteorologists from Arrhenius’s speculation. Nobody knew this theory until CO2 became conspicuous; now there is a webpage “The Legacy of Svante Arrhenius”, so as if the researcher of electrolysis had achieved nothing in his life but this speculation. There must be thousands of scientific speculations from the past 400 years. It will hardly be helpful if we, whenever something in the environment strikes us, search the complete history of science for suitable speculations. – Of course we change the planet, by building houses, increasing CO2 and so on. We are entitled to do so: we are a part of evolution and the universe, as well as volcanoes or asteroids, which change the planet too. What sense does it make to distinguish “natural” and “artificial” changes? We only got used to this distinction during the past half-century. The important thing is that whenever there is a real danger of either kind, science can help us, and pseudoscience can not. Science helped us against the “artificial” acid rain, as well as it protects us from the “natural” volcanoes, by improving the prediction of their eruptions.

But as for the half-degree, not even the most fanatical climatists can seriously believe that it’s dangerous. They gladly use it as an argument for their cause, but what they fear is the huge warming they deduce from Arrhenius’s theory, a warming which never really happened, but which they firmly believe in. Consequently, after a global cooling was reported recently, climatists quickly announced that this could only be temporary, and would be followed by an even bigger warming. Climatism is an ideology which is completely immune to reality. This I meant when I wrote that this ideology will stay until well into the next ice age. (Disregard of reality is a common feature of pseudoscience: There are still supporters of the hollow Earth today who claim that all satellite images are fake, because they don’t show the alleged openings at Earth’s poles. Cp. here.) – Climatism is only successful because it hits us in a soft spot: the environment. We all are eager today to protect it, but few are aware of the fundamental difference between climatism and all the other measures (like, e.g., the catalytic converters): All of them are based on sound scientific research, while climatism is based solely on pseudoscientific deductions from a historical speculation. Only sound scientific knowledge can really help the environment.


Q: Fukushima is not so dangerous, so what’s the problem?

A: First I’d like to stress that everything on this website, except for the following, was written before the terrible catastrophe in Japan, of which the nuclear accident at Fukushima is only a small part.

Generally, accidents like Fukushima or Chernobyl are not the real problem with nuclear power. They are just the tiny tip of a giant iceberg, which is nuclear waste. This dangerous waste is millions or billions as much as what is stored at any given moment at a nuclear plant, and it emits deadly radiation for many thousands of years. In Germany, it’s buried in salt mines. A few kilometers underneath these mines flows glowing magma. Nobody knows when at this place will be a volcano (although well-paid geologists assure us that it’s impossible). When this happens, and humankind forgot about the waste (what do we know about the holes the old Egyptians dug?) or cannot remove it in time, a big part of the waste will be blown into the atmosphere, which will end all discussions about the climate (or anything), worldwide and permanently. This is the real problem.

In my old physics book from school, where nuclear power is praised, it’s said that the salt mines were only temporary, and that the final decision about a real solution was yet to be made. At the time, the enthusiasm over a new energy source clouded the view of many scientists. – The final decision never came, because there is no real solution. Meanwhile the waste keeps piling up in the mines, because most of us don’t care about the future of the planet, including the climatists, in spite of their constant talk about our “responsibility for future generations”. Only when, every 25 years, a nuclear accident occurs, the public is shocked, only to forget it shortly after.

In the last section I wrote that we are entitled to change the planet. But this does not include long-lasting changes that are scientifically proven dangerous. Our experts are able to calculate to a high precision which kinds and amounts of radiation our nuclear waste will emit at any given time in the future. This is completely different from the future climate: Here the experts know next to nothing, only some amateurs believe to know everything.


Home